Thrust: A Novel

I just minded my shoes. Didn’t look up or anything. Finished my business. When I finally looked up, I tried not to look too interested. I mean, maybe this girl was crazy. Maybe she had a weapon. She had something in her hand for sure, clenched in a tight fist. Finally, I replied: “Why the fuck would I want to throw water on you?”

“Well, it’s a fast way to figure out if I can trust you or not,” she said.

I sat there and stared at her for a bit. She didn’t look crazy. She looked beautiful. I could see her better now, half in moonlight, half in shadow. Jesus, man, I was tired. We’d worked our asses off that day. I knocked off before Flint, walked home on legs so tired they felt like someone else’s. I probably stank too. “You don’t think you can trust me? Ask the snake,” I said, gesturing to the corn snake. Then I pulled my shirt off. I had the intention of going to the outdoor shower. I stood up and began to walk toward the back of the cabin.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, following me.

“Is that so,” I said, not looking back.

“Yes. I need to make a trade with you. My mother told me to find you. She told me you’re a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. People of the Longhouse.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“My mother was a linguist. I love histories that live underneath history.”

“History. Okay. Right.”

I reached the shower stall and opened the chest-high wooden door. Once inside, I took off my pants and draped them over the door. I eyeballed the knife in the shower, just to remind myself where it was. She just kept talking. Almost like she couldn’t stop.

“I’ve read all the names, if you don’t believe me. Mohawks, People of the Flint; Oneidas, People of the Upright Stone; Onondagas, People of the Hills; Cayugas, People of the Great Swamp; Senecas, People of the Great Hill; Tuscaroras, the Shirt-Wearing People. I know about the clan mother structure. Oldest participatory democracy on earth.” She stopped talking and stared at the snake.

It was weird listening to her recite all that at me. I have no idea who her ancestors were, though she was definitely in the ballpark with mine. But me and my father were laborers — urban workers, city people, more than we were anything else anymore. We didn’t talk about ancestors much. Besides, how is anyone supposed to know who they are anymore? As I listened to her, the words seemed like they might belong to me and my body, even though they were coming out of her mouth and her body. Ordinarily, I would have just ignored her, because typical white person ignorant gibberish. But I couldn’t tell if this girl was white or what; she looked like she was from someplace else.

Then she came over to the wooden shower door and peeped over the top. “Are you the first people?” she asked.

Whoever the fuck this girl was, she had strong-ass orenda.

I finished washing off and put my pants back on. (Ordinarily, I would have walked naked back to the cabin but, well, this woman with all the words was here.) When I opened the door to the shower, I noticed her squatting down to talk to the corn snake.

“Snake, you are neither of the sky world nor of the underwater world below,” she said. “You are of the earth, floating on the back of a turtle. Bertrand told me.”

The snake didn’t say anything. Or, if she did, I didn’t hear it. (I did bring the knife in with me, though.)

I let her follow me into the cabin. I wondered where my father was; it was past time for him to be home from work. In the kitchen, I took an apple from a bowl on top of the refrigerator, then pulled the knife out of my pants pocket and cut it in half. When I handed her half, she pulled out a smaller knife of her own, cut her half into smaller pieces, and fed one to the snake.

Even if this woman was crazy, I’d decided, she was okay.

We ate our apple pieces looking at the floor. My hair hung wet on my back, cooling my body from the heat of the day’s work.

“I have a trade to make you,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. The snake uncurled and recurled herself in a corner.

Finally, she opened up that clenched fist of hers. She was holding some kind of coin — not shiny but dark; maybe dirty, maybe old.

“What kind of trade?” I said.

She started whispering, some kind of list, her words aimed at no one.

“The Flowing Hair cent. The Liberty Cap cent. The Draped Bust cent. The Classic Head cent. The Coronet cent. The Braided Hair cent. The Flying Eagle cent. The Indian Head cent. The first Lincoln penny.”

Then she turned back to me. “Some stories say that the figure on this penny is meant to be a woman in an Indian headdress,” she said, handing me the coin.

“Indian Head penny,” I said. “Yeah, that’s some bigoted shit, isn’t it?” Then I rubbed it and looked more closely at it. The year read 1877. “Hey, is this worth anything?”